Adam Canfield, Watch Your Back!

by Michael Winerip

  Adam nodded. He felt like the basketball that time his dad backed the van over it.

  “You know, Adam, you can’t keep news down,” she said. “Marris couldn’t. Even the president can’t.”

  Adam didn’t say anything.

  “Are you mad about the Top Ten Bully List?” Jennifer asked.

  Adam shook his head.

  “We have to stand up to people like that,” she said. “If you let them get away with it, they keep coming at you, like Phoebe said.”

  Adam nodded.

  “You nervous about those creeps?” Jennifer asked.

  “Nah,” said Adam, looking away. “It’s just five high-school kids.”

  Jennifer was right. Lightbulbs did flash on all over town.

  The Canfields’ phone kept ringing. Adam didn’t want to talk to a soul, but the calls weren’t for him anyway. They were from friends of Adam’s parents, who wanted to ask if he was all right. They kept saying how sorry they were, how shocked they were, how they’d wished they’d known it was Adam — they would have called sooner. Was there anything the family needed? Food? Bandages? Were they monitoring Adam’s electrolyte levels? Did they need to borrow a hospital gurney?

  From news reports they assumed he was near death; they couldn’t believe it was just a bruised nose.

  Several said how brave he’d been to fight off five hooligans single-handedly.

  The detective overseeing the case also called. He suggested Adam go to the doctor. When Adam’s dad said that didn’t seem necessary, the detective explained that it would be good for the case if Adam needed medical attention. “Juries notice those nice details,” the detective said.

  The detective explained that in these situations it was common for the judge to issue a protective order so that the five accused were prohibited from having contact with the victim. “You should hear from the court soon,” he said.

  Adam got several e-mails from friends who all basically said the same thing: That was you, wasn’t it?

  He answered only one, to his grown-up friend Danny, who worked at the Tremble Animal Shelter. Danny was the rare and miraculous adult who actually seemed to understand kids. Danny wrote, “Thinking of you, buddy. Stop by when you want to talk.”

  Adam answered, “Thanks, Danny. I will.”

  The next day, kids kept asking. He knew most were trying to be nice, but he wished they’d stop. In band, the trombone player who sat closest to the baritone section whispered, “Don’t worry, Ad, I got your back.”

  A lot of kids said they were surprised that he didn’t look that bad; they sounded disappointed. In the halls, he could tell people were pointing him out.

  Everyone had advice on how he should have handled it. The worst were the ones who asked why he called the police. “For forty dollars?” a girl said. “How come your father didn’t just go over to their house and get the money back?” After the third time, Adam came up with a pat answer.

  “Ever been mugged?” he said.

  That shut them up.

  In the afternoon, the head guidance counselor, Mrs. Finch, called him to her office. With her was a big man Adam had never seen before. Adam knew Mrs. Finch from their Quiz Bowl Gladiator Team. She was the team adviser — officially, the Supreme High Gladiator Chieftain. She gave Adam the official Quiz Bowl Gladiator greeting: “Hail, brave warrior! From where have you come?” Adam was supposed to say, “From the battlefield of knowledge, great chieftain,” but he hated that stuff, especially with a stranger sitting there. Adam had no clue who thought up this national Quiz Bowl Gladiator racket, but it really was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard of.

  “How’re you doing, Mrs. Finch?” Adam said.

  Mrs. Finch cleared her throat dramatically, then whispered, “Come on, brave gladiator.”

  “Fromthebattlefieldofknowledgegreatchieftain,” Adam mumbled.

  “Good!” said Mrs. Finch. “How are you, sweetie? Need a big hug?”

  Adam liked Mrs. Finch fine. She seemed to be a nice lady. It was just, you could tell that she’d spent most of her career in elementary school guidance. She was a little overfriendly for Adam’s taste.

  “It’s OK,” said Adam. “I’m good.”

  “Oh, I’m going to give you one anyway,” said Mrs. Finch, who at least had the decency to make it a loose hug.

  She introduced Adam to the big man, Mr. Scott, the head of security for Tremble’s two high schools. He had a thick neck and wide shoulders and, to Adam, looked like a pro football player. Since being mugged, Adam was amazed at how many adults he was meeting who did jobs he’d never heard of.

  Mr. Scott said he’d been “fully briefed about the tragic incident” and was there to help. He said he assumed protective orders would soon be issued by the court and that would mean zero contact — these kids couldn’t even say hi to Adam. And if they did, he should let the school know immediately.

  “You know these yahoos, right?” said the man.

  Adam shook his head. “Just one.”

  “But you seen what they look like?”

  Adam hadn’t. He explained he’d only gotten a glance at one other kid, the boy who punched him.

  “Ah,” said the man, “flips and snitches, huh? Didn’t know that, but doesn’t surprise me.” Adam looked puzzled. “Cops must have flipped that Kenny Gilbert kid you ID’d and got him to snitch on the rest,” Mr. Scott explained. “Nice to have friends like that, huh?

  “You ought to know what they look like,” Mr. Scott continued. “Not that I think they’ll come after you.” He pulled out a Palm Pilot and called up each of the five names. Then he called up their photos.

  “Whoa,” said Adam. “You got every high-school kid on that thing?”

  “Every kid in the district,” Mr. Scott said. “Punks like this, you grab them, the first thing they tell you is they’re someone else. We just check it right there on the spot while we got ’em by the neck. Works good. With a photo, it’s hard to deny you’re you.”

  Adam stared at the faces. They looked normal. Basic big kids. No scars, no missing teeth, no tattoos on their foreheads — you couldn’t tell they were vile predators.

  “Any have brothers or sisters at Harris?” Adam asked.

  “We checked,” said Mr. Scott. “Only one at the middle school, and you won’t have trouble with him.”

  “You know that?” said Adam.

  “He’s, ah . . . the boy’s retarded,” said Mr. Scott.

  “What Mr. Scott means,” said Mrs. Finch, “is developmentally disabled.”

  “Right,” said Mr. Scott. “Sorry, I never remember. None of these modern titles sound like what people got. I always get that developmentally disabled thing mixed up with wheelchair victims.”

  “That’s physically challenged,” Mrs. Finch corrected.

  “Oh, right,” said Mr. Scott, who was collecting his stuff. “Will that do it?”

  Adam was sitting with his legs together, his hands in his lap, his head down, lost in thought and looking small.

  “Yo, it’ll be OK,” said Mr. Scott. “I seen lots worse situations. Every day’s a little easier. Piece of cake for a gladiator like you.”

  “Yeah, right,” Adam said, and he stood to leave before Mrs. Finch could hug him again.

  He was not done meeting strange adults. After Mrs. Finch, they marched him into the principal’s office.

  Normally, the Harris principal had the final review of each issue of the Slash, but he and Jennifer had caught a break for the January issue — Marris was gone and Mrs. Quigley was just starting. So Mr. Brooks, the world history teacher, had served as a fill-in adviser for the January Slash, and he thought everything they did was splendid (“from the Latin splendidus”) except their spelling, which he thought was atrocious (“from the Latin un-splendidus”).

  Mrs. Quigley’s office was on the main floor, in the back, where Miss Esther’s desk used to be. Adam’s eyes bugged out: behind Mrs. Quigley, the door to the Bunker — Mrs. Marris’s old un
derground headquarters — had been sealed off with yellow police crime tape.

  “Cookies?” Mrs. Quigley asked, offering a platter of Adam’s favorite, Mrs. Radin’s Famous Homemade Super-Chunk Buckets O’ Chocolate Moisty Deluxe chocolate-chip cookies.

  Mrs. Quigley said she wanted Adam to know that if any of those snow-shoveling kids gave him trouble, he could come to her. “You all right?” she asked.

  Adam nodded.

  “Every kid at Harris telling you what you should have done?”

  Adam looked at her.

  “It’s awful being the center of attention for something like that — you’ve just got to ignore the fools and keep going.”

  Adam liked that, except there were so many fools who needed ignoring, it was a big job.

  Mrs. Quigley seemed nice, like a jolly grandmother type. Calmer than Marris. He was surprised. He’d never considered the possibility of a principal being nice. Adam had dreaded every meeting with Marris — she’d either smiled them into submission or screamed the daylights out of them.

  “Another Moisty Deluxe?” Mrs. Quigley asked.

  Adam didn’t mind if he did.

  “Take two,” she said. “I always do.”

  The next thing Mrs. Quigley said really caught him off-guard. She said he’d done a terrific job on the Slash and that she admired how hard the staff worked. She said she believed in a free press — her dad had been a copy editor back East in Massachusetts for the Boston Traveler until it folded in the 1960s. She said when she graduated from college, she’d wanted to be a reporter, but it was mostly a man’s business back then, so she became a teacher.

  Mrs. Quigley told Adam she understood that trying to censor the Slash was slippery business, as Mrs. Marris had learned too late. “If the Chinese Communists can’t control the Internet,” she said, “it’s unlikely I can control the news here in Tremble.”

  But she also said that trust was a two-way street and that the more famous the Slash became, the more people would be gunning for it and the more an error or bad judgment could cost them. “You need an adult’s advice,” she said, “and I’ll try to be as truthful and fair as I can. But once we agree on a plan, I expect you to follow it. You get my meaning?”

  Adam did. She didn’t want to get kicked out of her job like Marris.

  “I promise to do my best to protect you,” she said. “But I warn you, they brought me out of retirement to do this, and I’m just here as acting principal. There’s a chance that when the year’s over, I’m gone. I’ve still got lots to learn — like where the bodies are buried.”

  Adam sneaked another look at the yellow police tape across the Bunker door.

  “Not literally,” she said. “At least I hope not. Anyway, I look forward to our meeting for the February issue. Got anything good working?”

  Adam started to say, then stopped. This Mrs. Quigley seemed good, but after Marris, Adam wasn’t sure. It was possible that her niceness was a trick. Plus one thing she’d said made him nervous.

  Why did she need to protect them? Protect them from what?

  Jennifer’s mom, who was a big PTA honcho, stopped by a little before seven to pick up Adam for the school board meeting. Adam hated meetings. Why was he going? He’d totally lost control of his life.

  It started with the pledge. Then some elementary kids sang “God Bless America,” and scores of certificates were handed out for the best spellers at the annual Bolandvision Cable Bee.

  Through it all, Jennifer took notes. Adam kept sneaking glances. What was she taking notes on? She had neat, looping handwriting, and she filled line after line, then page after page in an 8½-by-11-inch spiral notebook. The girl was a machine; the words kept looping out of her pen. Adam didn’t have a single word written down yet. What was wrong with him?

  The school board president had a question for the first-assistant-associate-superintendent: How many schools would be participating in the ceremony renaming the Willows street in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King?

  The first-assistant-associate-superintendent could not, of course, just say six and sit down. The man had to show off what a genius he was. He had to remind everyone what an exciting joint venture this was between the Tremble schools and the Tremble Zoning Board, and how pages and pages of signatures had been collected on petitions to rename the street —“a true sign of Tremble’s multicultural spirit.”

  He had to say exactly how many kids from each school would be going and how many were white, black, Hispanic, and Asian. “We might need to tweak those numbers,” said the first-assistant-associate-superintendent, whose name was Dr. Bleepin. “Right now we’re a little heavy on Asians, a touch light on Hispanics, but I promise a diverse group in the spirit of Dr. King’s quest for integration.”

  Adam had his eyes shut, and Jennifer nudged him. “Are you asleep?” she whispered.

  “Unfortunately wide awake,” he said. “It’s easier to spot the lies with my eyes closed.”

  Adam felt like he was being tortured; this Bleepin maniac was just warming up. “I want to add that Mr. and Mrs. Boland and the Boland Foundation have very generously underwritten the cost of the entire event,” Dr. Bleepin went on. “They’ve offered their Bolandvision Mobile Entertainment unit and an eighteen-wheel flatbed truck we can park right on the street — it converts to a stage. So all the dignitaries will be able to sit very high up. And they’ve hired a professional singing group, the Perfect Mix — a music ensemble, does a lot of work in schools; you may have seen them featured on Boland News 12’s Community Miracles program Sunday mornings at six. Their songs cover all Big Four ethnic flavors.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Bleepin,” said the board president.

  “In the food department,” continued Dr. Bleepin, “the Boland Foundation has underwritten twelve kinds of sushi, both chicken and beef burritos —”

  “Excellent,” said the board president. “The thing is — I can’t remember — did you give us a date?”

  “Actually, I don’t have one from the county but —”

  “No date?” said the board president. “This late?”

  “Oh, just a few loose ends to tie up,” Dr. Bleepin said cheerfully. “We’ll have it this week and send flyers home.”

  Adam opened his eyes. He took the notebook from his back pocket. He pulled out his pen. He held the pen top in his teeth and wrote three words in the notebook. Then he put the pen and notebook away.

  Jennifer leaned over. “What?” she whispered. By now she’d filled nineteen 8½-by-11 pages. “What was it?”

  “Tell you later,” he whispered.

  Once more that evening Adam opened his eyes, during the public forum at the end, when anyone could speak. Most of it was stuff like how great the crossing guards were. A few were nut cases, and Adam found them the most interesting — if you listened carefully, there was usually a nugget of truth.

  One woman identified herself as an outraged single mother. She was complaining about homework being unfair to young kids who don’t have parents at home to help. Adam tried imagining a world without homework, but the closest he could get was a field full of kids looking at the clouds. This woman was not going to convince anyone, he was sure.

  Then she said something about the science fair that made him open his eyes. He didn’t make a note right then; he waited for her to finish.

  Jennifer watched. Adam walked to the rear of the auditorium, crossed to the other side, and then went down the row to where Outraged Single Mother sat. He leaned over to her, said something, and gave her his notebook. She wrote in it.

  On the way home, Jennifer’s mom paid them no mind; she had on her headset and was making calls.

  They were sitting in the Astro van’s backseat, and Jennifer had put on the overhead light. “So, what’d you write down?” she asked.

  Adam opened his notebook. There were about five words. Near the top he’d written, “King/No Date.”

  “Something’s going on with renaming that street in the Willows for Dr
. King,” Adam said.

  “What?” said Jennifer.

  “You don’t feel it?” Adam said. “That Bleepin idiot — he knows the shoe size of every Spanish kid going to the ceremony but doesn’t know the date?”

  Jennifer was quiet. “I see what you’re saying,” she said. “So what do I do? Call him up?”

  “If you want six more notebooks of lies,” said Adam.

  “My mom’s the one who told me,” said Jennifer. “She heard about it at a PTA meeting. She thought it was wonderful.”

  Adam nodded. “No offense, but PTA people — they look for the best in their fellow humans.”

  “Wait,” said Jennifer. “What about that woman you met in the Willows? The one who helped you on the Marris story? What was her name?”

  “Mrs. Willard,” Adam said.

  “You said she knew everything about the Willows. She might know.”

  Adam shrugged.

  Jennifer peeked at his pad again. “What’s this?”

  “Outraged Single Mother’s phone number,” he said.

  “You want to do a story about no homework?”

  “No,” said Adam. “It’s for my science fair investigation. It tees me off, how much parents do the projects.”

  “Wait,” said Jennifer. “Your parents don’t help? I remember you guys couldn’t go to your grandma’s cottage on spring vacation last year ’cause you were all getting your project done.”

  “Me, too,” Adam said. “But I can’t stop thinking about this one thing. You remember last year — the rows on the far side of the gym?”

  Jennifer did. Everyone in the middle school had to do a project, and the far sides were mostly kids in low classes. A lot of those projects were wobbly posters Scotch-taped together; their hypotheses and conclusions were handwritten and crooked. It didn’t look like they’d gotten lots of help.

  “So what do you do?” asked Jennifer. “Not have a science fair?”

  “I don’t know,” said Adam. “I just figured Outraged Single Mother might give me an idea.”

  The Astro van pulled up to his house. He undid his seatbelt, opened the sliding door, and hopped out.